


Plans Are Useless (But Planning Is Indispensable)

by orphan_account



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellarke, Blake sibling feels, F/M, depictions of substance abuse by non main characters, graffiti artitst!Clarke, mostly off screen child abuse, not quite runaways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-08 21:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5514722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy's Ten Year Plan has a theme: Don't let Octavia's life go to shit.  There's a lot on it that most teenagers wouldn't add and a lot off it that most teenagers would. His Plan isn't really about him, though, so leaving "fall in love" off of it doesn't seem like a problem when he makes it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plans Are Useless (But Planning Is Indispensable)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shamyesapsoorap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shamyesapsoorap/gifts).



_“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”  
**Dwight D. Eisenhower**_

 

A lot of things that normal guys want aren't on Bellamy's 10 year plan. 

Octavia is only 7 when Bellamy first busts his lip on the back of Steve's hand. He doesn't know it at the time but it's the first step towards making his plan. His teeth are pink and shiny with blood when he smiles. He can't hit Steve so he opens his knuckles on other people's teeth. By the time high school rolls around he has a reputation for fighting and teachers say he has behavioral issues. His history teacher calls home in junior year, tries to tell his mom that her son is smart _so smart_ and if he could just apply himself. But Aurora isn't home and Steve tells her he doesn't have a son. 

Octavia looks at Bellamy across the kitchen table, Steve's voice carrying from the living room. She is gawky at 13, all limbs like a foal but her face is hard, eyes very blue. Bellamy raises his shoulder in a shrug.

“Will you focus?” he asks, reaching out to knock his knuckles against her math book. He's trying to talk her through math he only kind of understood himself. 

He was in kindergarten when his mom met Steve and probably still in kindergarten when they figured out she was pregnant. He wore scratchy suit and carried a ring down the aisle at their wedding. It's the most idyllic moment of their lives with Steve. Who liked to drink and got mean when he did. The only good thing about him, as far as Bellamy was ever concerned, was Octavia. Who was small and soft and smelled like milk from the moment they brought her home. Octavia was great, even when they moved her crib into his bedroom and made him share. 

The Monday after her phone call Mrs. Kane asks Bellamy to stay after class. She's kind of weird and way too intense but she's pretty nice and Bellamy really tries not to skip History too much. At Christmas time she always has one of those boxes of oranges on her desk. He peels one of them while he waits for the last stragglers to leave. It stings his knuckle where he has a split open scab. 

“My son owns an auto body shop,” she tells him and hands him a crisp white business card. He immediately smudges it with orange oil, “your knuckles are always bleeding anyway. You might as well get paid for it.”

“I don't know anything about cars,” he says, gruff because he's not good when people try to be nice to him. 

“Your counselor thinks we can call it work placement and count it towards graduating with the rest of your class,” she looks at him hard and he grunts instead of answering. He hasn't started his 10 year plan yet but if he had, graduation wouldn't be on it for him, “Marcus is expecting you to call him this week, Mr. Blake. See that you do.” 

That's all she seems to have to say on the matter, her attention turns to watering the little bonsai tree she keeps in her window. The class room is quiet and his hands smell like orange peel. Miller and Murphy are waiting for him out in the hall. Murphy doesn't give a shit about making it to class and Miller has a spare. Miller's arms are crossed over his chest and his eyebrows raise towards the edge of his toque. Bellamy just shrugs and stuffs the card into his jacket pocket.

“She's being weird again,” he says and ignores the whole interaction in favour of sharing a plate of fries at the greasy spoon down the road. The coffee is a dollar and the refills are free. It's a favourite hang out. 

He does call Marcus Kane though and he's not as nice as his mother but he's the same kind of fair. Bellamy's knuckles still bleed all the time but she's right, at least when he busts his hands up putting in a new transmission he gets paid for it. It isn't much but it means he can move out before graduation. The day he gets his first paycheck he rips a few pages out of one of his notebooks and gets to work. Octavia peers over his shoulder at the kitchen table once and wrinkles her nose, calls him a nerd. But she offers him her pens if he wants to colour code his _freakish Capricorn_ 10 year plan. Graduation makes the cut but it gets a big black question mark next to it. 

For his 18th birthday Steve gives him a duffle bag and asks for the key back. Largely Bellamy considers it a positive gesture because it's a half decent bag from the surplus. Anyway, that was assumed in his 10 year plan. It's right there in green before _graduate?_. 

The apartment is a shit hole. The worst possible suite in a squat, ugly, grey building with no elevator and a buzzer that doesn't work. It's mostly a basement and practically a dungeon. But it's only three blocks from his mom's place and it is part of his ten year plan. Not the specific apartment with the building's laundry room backing one of the bedrooms and only thin, high rows of windows to let any light in. But an apartment close to Octavia. He moves in eight days after his 18th birthday and she's the only reason it took so long. 

He can almost afford the apartment at it's listed price and Kane must say something nice when the building manager calls his reference. She tells him utilities and wi-fi are included and gives him the place. Every month Murphy gives him a crumpled wad of bills and every month only half goes to rent. The rest gets put in account there's no card for and builds interest. That's in the 10 year plan too. 

Murphy moves into the master bedroom knowing he's living on borrowed time but it runs out a lot faster than either of them expect. Octavia shows up at his door on a snowy night when she's 16 with a bag, a fat lip and no coat. From his place on the couch Murphy swears viciously and finishes his beer.

“I'll kill him,” Bellamy says, voice white hot. He's never meant anything so sincerely. He knows Murphy would help. Octavia rolls her eyes and shrugs into the hoodie he drapes over her shoulders. It dwarfs her, dangling over her fingers and she slaps him with one floppy sleeve.

“Or you could _not_ go to prison,” she says, joining Murphy on the couch. She crosses her legs and pulls the edge of his sweater down over her knees, leaving her in a faded blue tent of fabric. 

“There's always one weak bitch who isn't down with murder,” Murphy ignores Bellamy's scowl and hands her a beer, head spilling over the lip of the can. Octavia flashes her brother teeth when she drinks it.

“Anyway,” she says, ignoring Murphy, “this was in the ten year plan.”

“This was in year seven,” Bellamy grumbles and takes the last beer because fuck Murphy, if he wanted more he shouldn't have offered it to his teenage sister. 

Bellamy sleeps on the couch for five weeks and drives Octavia to class on his way to the shop. Murphy moves in with his girlfriend at the end of the next month and leaves Octavia the bed. They keep waiting for a call from social services, or for the cops to show up looking for a run away. Neither happens and that works just fine for them. Bellamy ends up with a roommate in high school and it's a good thing he never spent that half of Murphy's rent. He gets Octavia a card for the account and on Sundays Kane pays her to do filing in the office. 

Octavia's the whole reason there is a 10 year plan. Even when she drags him out into the miserable rain when he's already changed out of his dirty clothes from work. It's freezing and he's only in a tee shirt. Rain slicks his hair to his scalp immediately but it's kind of worth it. Someone has scrawled blue butterflies across the side of the building. They are so blue and so bright they seem to glow in the streetlights. Bigger and bluer and brighter than the rest one of the butterflies carries the word “ceegee” in it's wings.

When Bellamy passes it a few weeks later he realizes the CeeGee butterfly is sitting on human fingers emerging from the ground of the piece. It's fucking morbid and Octavia smiles viciously when he points it out.

By year eight of his 10 year plan they're back on track. Octavia graduates and Aurora is there in the crowd. Bellamy sees her but doesn't bother to go say hi. He sits in the back with his friends and they cause a scene when Octavia crosses the stage. There are signs and confetti poppers. Jasper wrangled an air horn out of somewhere and Octavia is all smiles. The faculty doesn't look very impressed with him but Vera Kane shakes his hand afterwards, tells him that she knew he'd turn out okay. 

Falling super in love with your sister's hot friend was never on the list but it becomes a problem for him anyway. 

Octavia meets Clarke when she starts taking self defense at the YWCA. The blonde is the instructor's roommate or wife or something and waits for him after class. Bellamy picks Octavia up enough that he knows her by sight even before they decide to be friends. She leans against the graffiti on the side of the Y, the two headed dear that stares down the viewer no matter where you stand to look at it. More of CeeGee's work which crops up more and more frequently around the neighbourhood. The blonde buries herself in a comically large scarf and wears thick wool socks under her work boots. She scowls at him where he leans against the door of his car until Octavia bounds over to him. 

It makes him think better of her, scowling at the creepy guy waiting for a womens self defense class to let out. One day one of the girls has a question for Lincoln and Clarke lingers, waiting for him when Octavia strikes up a conversation. Bellamy isn't there to pick her up and she takes the chance when it presents itself.

“I had to make sure she wasn't his girlfriend,” Octavia says like it's the most obvious thing in the world. Bellamy scowls at her in the bathroom mirror, trying to scrub engine grease off his hands. 

“He's like my age,” Bellamy tells her. Octavia just leans in the doorway and gives him an indulgent smile, “seriously, O.”

“He's even older than you,” she says helpfully and prances away. 

But Clarke isn't his girlfriend or his wife or whatever the kids are doing these days. She's just his roommate and then she's Octavia's friend. He'd suspect that O just befriended her to get closer to Lincoln except she's awesome. Her head tips back when she laughs and she is so mean it delights him. His apartment door never gets locked and all of a sudden he has a clever blonde sitting on his couch in sweaters that swallow her whole. She always has charcoal all over her hands and it transfers to her face when she pushes her hair back over her ear. 

Her gaze darts up from her notebook, focuses narrowly on Miller where he and Bellamy are drinking at the kitchen table. She tongues the edge of her lip and drops her gaze again, sweeps charcoal in smooth lines across the page. Bellamy laughs around the lip of his beer and everyone looks up at him. The apartment had been quiet. Clarke drawing with Octavia's feet in her lap. The drone of Christmas movies keeping them quiet and entertained.

“You look like a Dickensian orphan,” Bellamy shrugs, “it's seasonally appropriate.”

“Oh my god,” Octavia says, shaking her head “you are a _nerd_.”

Which, yeah. But Clarke laughs and rubs her hand on Octavia's cheeks so they match by the time Lincoln gets there. His eyebrows lift but he sighs, lets Octavia rub her nose on his cheek so he's charcoal dusted too and suddenly that's what they're doing. O finds a wine bottle with an actual cork to burn and even Bellamy gets into the spirit when Miller downloads A Muppet Christmas Carol for them.

“Please, sir,” Clarke says later when they're both at the fridge at the same time. She holds her empty hands out for a beer “can I have some more.”

Octavia definitely didn't befriend her just to get close to Lincoln because she's great all on her own. 

Bellamy puts Clarke's paint stained hands and CeeGee's art together to get alter ego when a new piece crops up across from Kane's shop. A soot monster in a newsboy cap explodes onto the wall opposite the garage where Bellamy can see it all day. The text looks like burning embers, the orange and black and red seeming to come off the wall with heat. The “work like a Dickensian orphan” really tips him off though. Not being subtle is Clarke Griffin. Miller just shakes his head, like they should have seen that one coming and maybe they should have. 

Still, Bellamy doesn't call her out on it and Clarke doesn't say anything about it. They both just let it go and Bellamy grows pretty fond of the soot monster on the side of the bodega. 

He doesn't really expect to run into Clarke as CeeGee until he does. And then it seems obvious because she works in his neighbourhood and they both keep weird hours. She's booking it down the street when he stays late to work on his truck. The engine's going an a quick fix has become a major undertaking. It's a lot later than he thinks it is and he steps outside for a smoke. Just to be out of the garage for a second. Maybe to look at his Dickensian soot monster. He wouldn't register as Clarke with her scarf up over her mouth, hood pulled down but he catches the shine of blonde hair and all she ever wears are those stupid work boots with wool socks. 

“Jesus,” he says, curls his hand around her bicep and pulls her off the street into the garage. Her blue eyes are wide and startled but she doesn't fight him. She strips out of her back pack and scarf, kicks them under the car that's making a _chk chk chk sound_ when the octogenarian who has had it since '74 tries to go over 50.

“Just in case,” she says defensively in a way that says _cops_.

“What did you do?” Bellamy rolls his eyes, puts on a pot of coffee because her finger tips are freezing when she curls her hand into his. 

“I might have tagged the cop shop,” she shrugs, still so angry that Wells is gone for _nothing_ , for being born black. 

“Might have,” he says dryly, digging in the fridge for non dairy coffee whitener because the cream's a couple days passed it's best before, “I say you gotta go big or go home, right?”

“I feel like you probably go home a lot then,” Clarke smirks and Bellamy thinks _fuck_ and then _I love her_. 

It's definitely not in the 10 year plan. The plan is based around the singular premise of Octavia not getting fucked up. Clarke isn't part of that. Not that she's _not_ part of that. She's a source for good in Octavia's life even if that usually gives Bellamy grey hair. He blinks to clear the thought and sees her for the first time, the fat braid over her shoulder, the flush in her cheeks. He glances passed her, through the wall to where he knows his Dickensian soot orphan lives across the street. Some weird tight part of himself loosens, his whole chest feels freer.

“Finally,” she says and curls her fingers into his hair when he kisses her.


End file.
